Friday, April 30, 2010

Nickelberry's Pizza & Dewmocracy

Many native Eldridge-ians are surprised by the sudden change of name of Paul Revere Pizza. It is now Nickelberry's Pizza. Instead of the handsome horse rider, we now are welcomed to the restaurant by a giant Gerber baby wanna-be. What does a baby have to do with pizza? And I'm just gonna say it, no sense beating around the bush... Nickelberry's sounds a little too similar to Dingleberries, which does not excite my palate in the least.

To see if the pizza had changed at all, I gave Nickelberry's a call and ordered a medium pepperoni, our usual Paul Revere order. I was able to add a side of breadsticks for a nickel (ahh it all makes sense now). Well the old pizza patriot box has been replaced by the generic map of Italy or, as they call it, 'Italia.'

The bread sticks are coming! The bread sticks are coming! They arrived as usual, wrapped like an oversized baked potato.

I opened the pizza box and, lo and behold, it looked and smelled the same as Revere's pepperoni.

The bread sticks also looked the same, slightly browned and positioned around a reservoir of buttery garlic sauce.

The final test: Taste. Yep, Nickelberry's Pizza tastes exactly the same as P.R.'s. So what's the deal? I couldn't dig up any info, but it looks like Paul Revere is still a legit pizza chain, so the local owner must have parted ways with the franchise.

You have to have pop (some call it soda, they are backwards and weird) to wash down the grease and allow for maximum pizza burpage. Purpose: to combat the heart burn and allow you to once again enjoy the pepperoni goodness you just consumed.

I found the three new Mountain Dew flavors at Target, so I bought them for a side by side comparison. In the least surprising move ever, Richie drank all three.

The first flavor is White Out- a grapefruit and lemon lime soda. He describes it as 'Squirty.'

Not bad.

The second flavor is Typhoon. It blew him away.

Actually, it just blew and ended up half full in the garbage atop my massive collection of kettle corn bags and skinny cow wrappers. He said it was too fruity. I took a sip and agreed. It tastes like a very sweet fruit punch with overwhelming pineapple flavor.

The third flavor is Distortion, which is essentially Mountain Dew with an extra kick of lime. Hee-yah

It vaguely reminded him of the limey green rivers served at our favorite ice cream parlor, Lagomarcino's. But really, it's just Dew with more fake lime flavor.

Congratulations White-Out! A 12-pack of you is now stowed in our refrigerator to be consumed over the next...oh 5 hrs or so during non-stop Modern Warfare matches. You can vote for your favorite flavor HERE.

Pizza and pop- a classic American pairing, much like Jim and Pam, they are meant to be together.